


An Empty Chair

by GoldenThreads



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 08:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20239768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: Ferdinand's good isn't good enough, but war is an awful place for a mope. Edelgard's frankly over it.





	An Empty Chair

**Author's Note:**

> The utter whiplash between Ferdinand's B-supports with Edelgard & Byleth, when the world's been swept out from under him and he is useless-- _she did not even consider me at all_\--to him suddenly bursting out Universal Education as a policy option in Edel's A-support is my absolute favorite oddity of this disaster opera prince. He's, uh, trying.

“We have a problem.”

Hubert’s gaze flicked up from his papers as Edelgard swept into the room, mind skimming over a half dozen possibilities for each furious step she took in his direction. There had been no pressing reports from his network that morning, the troops had all been paid within the last week, and for the moment, not a one of their hard-won allies seemed in danger of defection. He waived a hand for her to continue, but instead of stopping to report, she slammed her palms onto his desk, just shy of furious.

_“Ferdinand,”_ she grit out at last.

“Finally more trouble than he’s worth?” He folded his hands together and flashed the fond, conspiratorial smile he saved for her alone. “I have an answer to that.”

Edelgard whirled, letting him catch only a sliver of the whites of her eyes as she rolled them, and sagged into an armchair by the fireplace. Not business, then. He rang for a tray of evening tea and biscuits, then joined her in the warm glow. 

She rested her chin in the palm of her hand, gazing thoughtfully at the flickering flames. “I ran into him by the stables. He tried to defer to me on matters of cavalry. To _me._ I haven’t ridden for anything more than ceremonial parades since I was _ten.”_

_Good,_ Hubert didn’t add, though he didn’t conceal his smug smirk either.

“It’s…” She searched briefly for a word, then grimaced when none sufficed. “Untenable. I may honestly prefer the obsessive rivalry. At least that was productive, in its way.”

That wasn’t exactly how Hubert remembered it. “Ferdinand was fool enough to challenge you to that duel. It is hardly your concern if it cut his ego down to an appropriately minuscule size.”

Edelgard shook her head, hand moving up to brush at her forehead in what he knew was the beginning of a stress headache. “That damn duel cut him off at the knees, Hubert.” 

_I am meant to lead, but I crippled someone I consider a friend._

The maid arrived with the tea—and only the tea. A new girl, referred in by his network with excellent references, but who clearly hadn’t memorized their preferences yet. Hubert gave her a stiff nod and tried not to scowl at the flowery liquid in the cup in front of him. Damn, damn. “I suppose,” he grit out after a too-sweet sip of boiled leaves, “He has a certain value when it comes to morale. Few men remain so determined to kindle goodwill in the middle of war. If his mood is dispiriting to the troops, then it must be dealt with.”

She fixed him with a strange look. It had been years since he failed to read a single expression on that face, but somehow, with the firelight dancing in her eyes and a biscuit lifted halfway to her lips, she managed a new one. Not quite wonderment, nor frustration, nor fondness. 

“He has a certain value,” Edelgard agreed once she’d finished her biscuit. “And I’ll be damned if we lose it now.”

  


* * *

  


Hubert found him on the outskirts of the training grounds, where the archers had set up a series of unusual targets that the cavalry occasionally borrowed for javelin maneuvers. Thankfully, all of the troops had removed to the mess hall and barracks for the evening, and there was no one else there to see the pitiful sight of Ferdinand sitting in the dirt, knees folded like a child at story time, staring mournfully up at where his javelin had lodged itself in a tree branch two feet to the left of its target.

Dexterity was one weakness Ferdinand did not typically possess. Hubert cleared his throat.

Ferdinand didn’t turn to face him, though he raised both arms in a grand gesture of welcome. “He comes! My own personal Death Knight.” He’d been using the same joke ever since Hubert first took to the field on horseback, and his voice sounded as tired as the joke itself. “Have you come to show me how to slay a tree? It appears I have failed to manage even that. Truly there is no career as a woodcutter in my future.”

“Ferd—”

“Ah, no, do not say it,” Ferdinand declared, shaking a finger. “My hubris on display! The tables turned! Man felled by tree at long last!”

“Up,” Hubert snapped. When immediate compliance failed to follow, he grabbed the back of Ferdinand’s collar and hauled him to his feet. “Ferdinand. You’re done.”

The other man scrambled out of Hubert’s grasp, a certain wildness in his eye as he turned, as though he’d just been handed his death warrant instead of a petty disciplinary action. Which. Oh.

Hubert grimaced. “I don’t _announce_ an assassination.”

“Obviously. I know that,” Ferdinand snipped, adjusting his cravat with too much effort. “Fine. You have my attention. I still have that much to my name. At the Empire’s service, sir yes sir.”

Edelgard was, as ever, correct. This truly was worse than his combative boasting ever was. 

Hubert crossed his arms and said nothing. He let the full breadth of his height, of his shadow, of those few inches Ferdinand never managed to catch up to, tower over the other noble. Only once Ferdinand’s shoulders slumped a hair, and his eyes darted to the ground, did Hubert sigh and finally speak.

“Have you never wondered why your father sits languishing in a prison instead of a pauper’s grave?” Hubert asked lowly, soft enough that his voice wouldn’t carry even as far as the trees.

No need for niceties or preamble in _this_ particular conversation.

Ferdinand’s lip twitched, and he gave a strained laugh. One of his hands made it to his hip in that usual lopsided stance of his, but there was no force in it today, just an empty echo of authority and confidence. “I assumed he was not worth the energy, seeing as he is worth less than the mud on Edelgard’s boots.”

“Shockingly astute,” Hubert admitted at length. “But at the time, she was concerned you would not be so obliging in seeing it that way.”

“Do not pretend she thought of me.”

“She certainly wasn’t thinking of herself, or she would have let me wipe out your entire blighted family line,” he snapped, cold and tense at the memory. When they wrote and rewrote the purge list, the von Aegir family had been the most contentious issue between them. Hubert gutted his own family; the von Aegirs deserved a far worse fate. “I will never suffer your father to sit at her side in the minister’s chair. But she has ever grieved the thought of it sitting _empty.”_

Ferdinand stared at him as though he were an assortment of mismatched fractal shapes from a Miasma instead of a man. 

“In simpler terms, if your efforts are truly so useless—”

“Halt,” Ferdinand said. Not a commander’s barked order so much as a murmur to a familiar horse. “That is. Huh.” He clenched his hands into fists, then rubbed his empty palms against the sides of his coat. The man had none of the restraint needed for a proper negotiator.

At last Ferdinand hazarded something not quite a smile, something eerily similar to that skeptical wonder that Edelgard offered the day before. “You have been planning this war since we were children. I doubt there is room for further input.”

Hubert waved a hand in silent assent. The comment deserved nothing else; if the plan were not perfected, they would not have begun. 

A real smile was growing now, lighting up Ferdinand’s eyes as it pressed higher into his cheeks. “But you, _you_ mean to tell me that after…?”

“Much as it pains me to say, I fear greater optimism may be needed at the reconstruction stage than we alone can bring to the table. Surviving a war is one matter. Leading a world to thriving is another.” 

Strictly speaking, Hubert didn’t say they required Ferdinand. They did not. But if Edelgard wanted him, then they would have him. There was, after all, a Prime Minister’s seat awaiting, and Hubert would much rather stand in the shadows than sit in the light. And one could scarcely ask for a more distracting presence in the spotlight than Ferdinand himself.

“Yes. Quite.” Ferdinand nodded to himself, tapping his fingertips against his lips. “There are matters to be considered, if that is to be my range of expertise…I do not know nearly enough about tax farming, come to think of it. I shall have to inquire after…”

  


* * *

  


“Hubert?” called Edelgard from the doorway, her voice tinged uncommonly sweet. “Why has Ferdinand left a three hundred page manifesto on imperial policy, legal reformation, and the nobility system on my desk?”

“Perhaps he heard you required further kindling to make it through the winter in proper comfort.”

“I thought similarly. Then I read it.”

Hubert actually looked up that time, frowning as she brought him a sheaf of papers. “It can’t possibly be too inflammatory for literal burning.” Ferdinand was clever, but he hadn’t _that_ much depth. He could hardly mastermind a true campaign of polemic against them. “There are no valid arguments for preserving the nobility that we have not countered.”

She shook her head, no longer bothering to suppress her smile. “It does start with an analysis of every conceivable positive aspect of the nobility.”

“Typical.”

“Followed by a frankly ruthless deconstruction of every single one, and suggestions for how those aspects can be repurposed into a functional meritocracy.” Edelgard dropped the papers onto his desk. “Honestly Hubert, what did you _do_ to him?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, Hubert picked up and scanned the choice selections she’d brought for his perusal. The final pages included various methods to put the ideas into action even in the middle of war, including the results of a brainstorming session with Caspar’s personal battalion. The military always was the ideal ground for testing new training methodologies. 

When he looked back up, Edelgard’s smile had shifted into a piercing smirk. “Pick three. I want them implemented by month’s end.”

“Lady Edel—” 

She raised a delicate eyebrow.

“…As you wish.”


End file.
